Wednesday, November 4

Attn meddling governments! Will you jokers get on the same page to deal with IS and AQ?

I took heat yesterday because I quoted from a piece at Voltaire Network about France and Syria by a Frenchman named Thierry Meyssan. Years ago Meyssan wrote a book claiming 9/11 was an inside job; it's probably still available from the Conspiracy Theories Book of the Month Club. That's not the only conspiracy theory he's come up with. He thinks the Haiti earthquake was another inside job. Look, I never heard of Meyssan or Voltaire Network until the other day. I'm just trying to figure out what's been going on in Syria. If Meyssan went over the top by accusing the French government of actually creating the Free Syrian Army 'brand,' a Guardian report from December 2012, France funding Syrian rebels in new push to oust Assad, suggests he wasn't over the top by much.France, it turns out, is yet another government that's been pussyfooting around in Syria. So how many pussyfooters are we talking about now? Let's see: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Iran, Turkey, USA, Lebanon. And Israel and Jordan, although it seems this year they realized they were knee deep in blowback and backed off, at least a bit. England must also be pussyfooting in Syria -- England is always pussyfooting. And France. That makes ten.Then add Russia. But at least Russia has an official invitation from the Syrian government, and is actually focused on the task at hand. The rest are off in la-la land, pursuing their own agendas in Syria. The upshot is that Al Qaeda and Islamic State have run rings around them. It's the ISAF in Afghanistan all over again. You know what's funny about all this? The Europeans complain they're being overrun by foreigners. To which the Syrian government could reply, 'So how does it feel?'********

"What Julia Child did for French cooking, Pundita is doing for foreign policy discussion. She's opened a haute pursuit to ordinary people." - Caesar Rodriguez

"Few bloggers think as deeply as Pundita does. And few have her foresight." - Uppity Woman

"There is no other blogger like Pundita. She has carved a niche - part history and part humint - that makes any essay of hers a thing unto itself. In addition there are the sparkles of her dry wit sprinkled through her work." - Dymphna, Gates of Vienna